


dying embers

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Episode: The First Day, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: “Did you see his eyes, Ri? Really look into them? Those eyes have fire in them.”She just stares at him for several long seconds. Then: “I'm not sure how you can see that as a good thing.”
Relationships: Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Kudos: 32





	dying embers

“How're the Elrics doing? You keeping those boys out of trouble?”  
“I'm their commanding officer, not their father.”  
“Mm. Hey, tell me something, Roy. Why'd you decide to make Ed a State Alchemist anyway? He's just a kid.”  
\- Maes Hughes and Roy Mustang, FMA: Brotherhood, Ep. 2: “The First Day”

“What was that?! What did you _do_?”

The boy won't look him in the eye. He's shaking. His breathing is haphazard and Roy thinks he might be on the edge of crying. The fabric of his shirt is still balled up in Roy's clenched fist, and he is totally helpless to fight. He's missing his _arm_ , for God's sake. And one of his legs.

And Roy's heart is thundering in his chest, and he can't fight the flashes of the war: the wailing cries of dying men who were just as broken as this boy is. Amestrian soldiers he couldn't protect. And worse, the Ishvalan children who survived long enough to lose limbs to the conquering army's mines and explosions, only to burn in his indiscriminate fires, hours or days later. He can't _think_ about this.

Blood and gore spills out into red-black pools in the desert sand, and in the shells of burnt out buildings. And on the basement floor in an idyllic country house on a dirt road at the end of the tracks. “What. _Was. That_?” he repeats. He _growls_. And he's about to shake the kid, yell again, whatever it takes to make the boy _wake up,_ so that he can snap himself out of his own fucking head, and his racing heart, and the screaming-crying-begging. And the broken silence.

And then, the suit of armor... stops him. There's no restraint, not even a cry for him to stop, no call for help. A metal hand rests gently on his arm. That's all. A touch. A pause. Roy takes a shaky breath.

He glances up, still struggling to hold back his own panic. He can't think about the war. Not ever. Especially not now.

He wrenches himself away from the memories, painfully. Any little thing can set him off, sometimes.

And whatever this is that he's walked into, it is not a little thing.

“We're sorry,” the armor cries. He just keeps repeating the words. “We're sorry, we're sorry.” A _child's_ voice. And Roy yanks his arm away, and he has to work to push down the bile rising up his throat.

This can't be happening. This is impossible, a horror story.  
  
Mustang drops the kid. He lands heavily in the wheelchair and looks up at Roy with the same dead eyes Roy remembers too well from the battlefield.  
  
The soldier is storming out of the house and slamming the door behind him before anyone can stop him. The dog barks and growls from behind the closed door.

It's Riza who finds him, a few minutes later, sitting in the shade of a tree at the edge of the property. He scrambles to his feet as soon as she starts approaching. “I'm sorry,” he whispers. (“We're sorry. We're sorry. We're _sorry_.”)

She just stands there, arms crossed over her chest, frowning down at him in a way that somehow manages to convey both admonition and concern. She doesn't reach out for him, they don't-can't-won't, not since coming back from the war. But she reminds him with just one raised eyebrow that he's supposed to be the representation of Amestris' unyielding strength out here in this backwater town. Running away from a little boy hardly conveys the right image. But her voice is quiet and calming when she says aloud, “They're just children.”

_They're just children._

Nothing to be afraid of. And, also, in need of care.

Roy nods his understanding, and Riza offers a small smile, meant to be encouraging. And it softens her. She becomes the caregiver. Not the girl he knew, who parented her own father while Roy was caught in the middle of the unspoken but constant tug-of-war between Berthold's obsessive passion for alchemy and Riza's desperate need to earn her father's affection. Not the battle-hardened soldier she became in Ishval, either. This is entirely different from either of those, like flickering images of who Riza might have been if life were calmer, or fairer. If someone had stepped in to care for her when she was young, and lost her mother.

_They're just children._

Roy takes a deep breath and follows the lieutenant into the house.

It's the grandmother who explains what happened, as well as she can. She never stops glaring at the uniform Roy wears, but he's well-used to this kind of reception from most of the Eastern region. They were ripped apart by the war, and in their eyes, the military hurt more than it helped. Roy's too exhausted to defend his profession, anyway. The hollow pit in his stomach that began sucking him down in that basement filled with blood and decay only pulls him deeper as Pinako Rockbell describes watching that boy show up at her doorstep in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm, seeing him bleeding out, on the edge of death, as lightning flashed through the sky. The looming suit of armor that held him in his hands hinted at an even darker story. But she could hardly begin to untangle that one until Ed was safe. Well, stable, anyway.

Pinako's voice is the only thing breaking the forebording silence that haunts this house. If the basement of the house next door was the hellgate, this is the place that holds the lingering ghosts.

Roy reaches up to his forehead and tries to massage away the tension there. When he sets his hand down, he glances out of the corner of his eye at Alphonse and Edward Elric. They've been there with him in this room for nearly half an hour, still and silent, and he has no idea how much either of them are capable of understanding; Ed's face has remained slack, his eyes wide and staring at nothing. And Al has no facial cues to look for.

 _They're just children._ Roy has to fight the urge to vomit.

He turns back to Pinako, and his voice shakes only a little as he says “I'd heard rumors of a brilliant alchemist living in this town, so I came to check them out. The last thing I expected to find was a boy skilled enough to attempt human transmutation.”

Skilled enough, and fearless enough, and certain enough of his own invincibility to insist that he could be the one to do what no one else ever had. ( _“You're not ready to learn flame alchemy.”_ )

“I'd say he's more than qualified to become a State Alchemist,” Roy muses aloud. Of course he is, alchemy has already destroyed his life. At least Roy understood what he was getting into when he accepted Fuhrer Bradley's commission. Didn't he?

For a second he catches the grandmother's eye, and whatever it is she sees reflected in his gaze sets her off. She snarls and slams her cane against the side of the table. “Would you have these boys go through hell again?!” she snaps.

And Mustang watches as the brothers _react_ , for the first time. Al's large metal fingers slip off the handle of the wheelchair, and his head, which had been looking down at his brother, tilts upward just enough to look at Roy.

And Edward Elric glances up as well. His eyes meet Mustang's, and there is something in them that Roy recognizes: _hope_. Enough to light a spark from dying embers.

He slips out of his chair and crouches in front of Ed. The boy's gaze is slippery, flickering, unfocused. He's holding his breath. His remaining hand curls into a fist on the arm of a wheelchair.

Roy smiles. “I'm not forcing you,” he says, with quiet intensity. “I'm offering you an opportunity.”

He watches Ed for a moment longer. The boy doesn't say anything; he doesn't even give anything as identifiable as a nod. But he moves his head slightly, a gesture that at least lets Roy know that Ed has heard him.

He glances back at the brothers only once as he collects his coat and calls to Riza. They are speaking too softly for him to hear, but that doesn't matter. Roy's still smiling softly as he follows Hawkeye down the dirt path.  
  
It's only once they're well on their way back to East City that Riza speaks up, after first searching Roy's face for a hint at his thoughts. “Do you really think this is a good idea, sir?” Her voice is calm, but Roy knows Riza enough to tell when she's unsettled. She sits in the seat across from him as the train rolls down the tracks. He leans forward, putting the weight of his forearms on his knees so that he can see her a little more closely.

She turns away from him to look out the window. “I've never seen anyone look as broken as that little boy,” she says softly.

Roy sits up. Familiar, uncomfortable guilt twists in the pit of his stomach. He looks down at his ungloved hand resting on the train seat. He sighs, and lets his eyes flicker back to Riza. “I was broken once,” he reminds her.  
  
She doesn't say anything, but she hardly has to. He knows she remembers the deep depression he'd sunk into in the aftermath of Ishval, the fights he'd had against himself while they were there. They don't talk about it, but it's there, unspoken, her battlefield promise to keep him alive.

She shifts away from the window to look him in the eye. “You would put a child into that position, sir?” she asks. Point blank, with all the force of a bullet from a gun.

Roy sighs, slowly, looking to Riza for guidance. If she really doesn't agree with this, she'll push against him. Won't she? “He's not broken,” he says firmly, instead of directly answering the question. Riza frowns at him. “Did you see his eyes, Ri? Really look into them? Those eyes have fire in them.”

She just stares at him for several long seconds. Then: “I'm not sure how you can see that as a good thing.”

Roy leans his head against the window glass and watches the rolling countryside for a long time. It _almost_ reminds him of the first time he'd left Central, to meet Riza and her father in their old, forgotten manor house, a train and a walk and a horse-drawn carriage ride away from everything he'd ever known.

He turns back to Riza. “What those children did... it shouldn't be _possible_. The military will be knocking on their door sooner or later.”

The same way they'd knocked on the Hawkeyes' door, too, once or twice a year, with offers that verged on threats. Riza's face darkens. Because of the memories themselves or because he's bringing them up, Roy has no idea.

Her father hated the military, and feared what the State would do with his life's work. With good reason. Riza holds her hands in her lap, her posture rigid, so stiff and prim and proper that Mustang can't help but be aware of how much she hates this conversation. “The military's already been to their door.”

Roy sighs. He wants to protest and say that they don't count, but there is absolutely no reason why that's true, except for his desire to pretend he's somehow still one of the good guys. He scrubs at his forehead with the heel of his hand. He can't stop seeing those kids, and their war story; the way the boy in the armor had cried, the way eleven-year-old Edward Elric, in his wheelchair, looked at Roy. He didn't flinch away, but more than that, there was such awesome and terrible intelligence in that look. Roy had seen that look in Berthold Hawkeye's eyes, once or twice, when his teacher seemed to lose touch with reality completely, seeing things that no one else could see.

It's that look, more than anything else, that tells Roy he'll be seeing the Elric brothers again.

“I just told him how to find me,” he tells Riza, and he isn't sure if it's an excuse or an explanation. Because they are just children, and he isn't ready to carry the weight of that kind of responsibility yet. Roy can tell that Edward Elric isn't broken, and he himself... might not be. He's been faking it well enough, anyway. But he isn't whole, either. None of them are. “Don't worry,” he says – to Ri or to himself, he isn't sure. “It'll be years before they're ready.”  
  
Riza nods, slowly. “Yes,” she agrees, still uncertain. “I suppose you're right.”


End file.
